MORE funding will be needed to cover Cornwall Council’s spending on coronavirus measures, says the Council’s deputy leader.
Cllr Adam Payneter says that the full impact of the pandemic on Cornwall Council’s ability to maintain services will not be known until later, when the loss of council tax and business rates payments can be seen.
But at the moment, the Council says it is showing a net pressure of £28 million, that it expects this to rise by a further £10m, and that it will need more support from central Government to cover its costs.
The council has no plans to hold an emergency budget as a result but said that financial reports would be going to the Cabinet in July when any decision might be made.
Adam Paynter, who is Cornwall Cabinet member for finance, said: ’Speaking to local authority leaders up and down the country the government will need to come out with one more (funding) package for local government and we do believe there will be a further package coming forward.
’The government said at the beginning of this that they would cover all costs and local authorities should do everything to protect residents.
Cllr Paynter said that he did not expect the costs of the virus to have any impact on council services in the short term and said that the council’s good financial planning had put it in a stronger position than other councils.
But he warned: ’We do have a savings programme and if those savings are not met we may have to look at other areas.’
Cllr Paynter said that adult social care was still a key pressure for the council and said that planned savings in that area would be “difficult to achieve”.
And he said that the full impact of covid-19 would not be known until later – particularly the impact of any loss of income from council tax and business rates.
He said: ’It is council tax and business rates which will be really important – we don’t know the impact on our ability to raise taxes. If we don’t it could impact on up to a quarter of a billion in council tax and a similar level of business rates.
’We can make predictions on what we have done so far, for example we have done a lot of payment holidays for people.
’But we don’t know for example how many new claimaints of universal credit that will have an impact. They fall into the system for council tax support so they don’t pay council tax and so there would be losses in income from council tax.
’But we won’t feel the loss of that until next year. Similarly on business rates, if businesses fail then we lose those business rates.
’Covid-19 is not over yet and we don’t know how much we might have to spend on it and we don’t know how long this will go on for.
’That is a real unknown that means we will seek to be prudent with our finances to make sure that Cornwall can continue to receive services from us.’
By Richard Whitehouse, local democracy reporter